The Seaxe - Middlesex Heraldry Society

Civic Heraldry in the Chilterns
- A Survey by John Allen
The medieval parish may have cheerfully survived
without such an item but one piece
of equipment essential for any
Chiltern community of borough
status was a corporate seal with
which to authenticate its decisions
and agreements. Dunstable's use of
the arms of its neighbouring Priory,
and Henley's abrupt change from a
rampant lion to the letter H below a
crown and sunburst showed that
sigillography and the orthodox
English heraldic system did not
necessarily proceed hand in hand. It
was nonetheless from such
beginnings that Civic Heraldry
developed.
Official inspections of armorial insignia throughout the
country recorded Berkhamsted's
seal displaying a castle surrounded
by symbols of association with the
Duchy of Cornwall in 1634. At an
even earlier visitation in 1566
Wycombe's seal was shown to be
based on the swan badge of
Stafford, former Earls and Dukes
of Buckingham.
HIGH WYCOMBE
Yet in the period that followed civic fathers' regard for
their own insignia might best be described as fickle. The
sun's rays bursting from Edward Ill's badge at the top of
Henley's shield were mistakenly
transcribed around the town
into drops of rain and even bolts
of lightning. Dunstable's horseshoe
and ring were corrupted
into a meaningless twist of lines
eventually imagined with
misplaced relief to depict a
conical ale-warmer! Evidently
both Hitchin Urban and Rural
District Councils adopted a DIY
approach to the assumption of
HITCHIN
arms. The crested' china town
souvenirs avidly collected early in the
twentieth century added to the
prevailing image of civic heraldry as
anarchic territory neglected by
authority. Pieces were decorated
with established arms for towns like
Luton where such existed, and
sometimes with irrelevant or
imaginative shields where they did
not. Mementos were made for
LUTON
Princes Risborough. Tring, and the
Chalfonts whose aspirations to
armigerous status were not well
known. They often bore a shield charged with an informal
2
county badge - for until the High Sheriff of
Hertfordshire defrayed the cost of a Grant of Arms for
his own county in 1925 none of the Chiltern County
Councils had an armorial bearing of its own.
Future social historians may come to explain the
concerted rush to regularise this situation under the
Labour Governments that followed the Second World
War. The injection of an armorially precocious
HEMEL HEMPSTEAD DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION
Development Corporation at Hemel Hempstead into
the Chiltern landscape may have unwittingly initiated the
flow that followed, for in a new wave of armigerous
activity Bucks (1948), Oxon (1949) and Beds (1951)
County Councils applied for arms in quick succession.
Rickmansworth UDC celebrated the
accession of Queen Elizabeth II by
petitioning the Earl Marshal for arms
and Chesham Urban, and Luton Rural
District were among local councils all
over the country who joined their
number. Now was the period when the
unmistakable personal style of the
prolific heraldic designer Dr Ellis
Tomlinson first appeared. His
distinctive hand can be seen in the
1953 crest for Amersham RDC and in
the derived arms necessary for
Amersham Town Council after AMERSHAM
Parliament drastically reorganised the
basis and boundaries of local administration in 1974.
In this reform Buckinghamshire retained Whiteleaf
Cross, the landmark depicted at the top of its shield, but
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE C.C.